yani

Love the orange.

I had this problem a few years back with Carnage Red. Turns out my problem was a little complex. Essentially, I was putting multiple coats of this Red on as a base coat. Because I had put it on thickly, the first layer wasnt completely dry by the time I was putting on the second layer - it looked it on the surface, but that was the skin with the interior still needing to dry completely. When paint dries, it shrinks, thus causing the cracking. I figured this out trying to replicate the results... because I couldn't. Which is a real pity because the effect was actually pretty awesome, and I wanted to know how to do it again.

I forgot to post this, but I covered the steps with greenstuff and left it a little messy, to indicate rough rock. I left it to cure overnight OK, so while waiting for that to cure, I turned my sights onto the second base. I had a lot of troubles with this base, as I painted up Alis Testarossa for a second entry, and her pose, while dynamic, is really awkward to think of a suitable "story" for her. Finally, I found this picture and got inspired by the pedastels that the angels were standing on. So I drew out the concept art and the"technical" piece for the size of the wood I need to cut out: I drew the final piece out on a slab of wood and cut it out. Here it is: I wanted it to fit around a Charles Schwab cork, since the cork had a nice texture. I proceeded to cut out another, identical piece, and a smaller one With a sanding stick, I rounded off the edges a little, and gave the sides and top a good sanding with a 240 then 600-grit sandpaper. I want as smooth a surface as possible since I want a marble-like paintjob. (the 600 had pewter shavings on it, which is why the piece is grey) I stuck them together using glue and now waiting for it to dry!

I began by cutting 4.5cm-sized pieces of brass, after testing with one that that was a reasonable size. I began to make the simple two-sided curl, and made a few of them! I think I had enough, but I needed to check. I took a length of brass rod, circled it around the steps, and cut it off at the point where I needed it at. With delicacy and superglue, I stuck the tops of the curls to the brass rod. I'm not concerned about the bottom being even since I can disguise that with bushes. I left a little end for the banister to attach. Just got to wait for the glue to dry (since it's taking a while for some reason!)

Hey folks. I'm posting my WIP because I've had some really really bad luck trying to do bases beyond some sand & flock. I've got two lovely pieces nearly completed in their painting for GenCon, and now that I am home from my internship in Irvine, I have little time to make mistakes Let's see if the WIP makes me more cautious and crowdsourcing increases my competence :) So, the first base. I painted up Sister Evangeline from Anima Tactics. The way she's standing evoked a sense of loneliness, but I also wanted something church-based. I settled on a set of steps. Here are the (badly drawn) concept art: Essentially, she standing on the top of three steps. A small, delicate iron fence surrounds the stairs, and it'll be in late fall, so lots of dead leaves and bushes, etc. I did some frantic ordering on Amazon last week so that it was available when I arrived home yesterday (yay! Prime), so here is the collection of things I think I may be needing for this base: Yes, the cup of tea is an essential part of the build :) First thing: the steps. I had ordered a set of various-sized circles from Amazon, and chose the 4cm rounds (I use metric) to use. It gives Evangeline some area for her wind-blown clothes, but its not overwhelming the miniature. I needed to size the first step. I found the center point, drew crosshairs, and set the lip of the top step to be 1cm from the edge. Since I didn't have a protractor handy, I decided to try and get as much structure within the lip design so that both sides are relatively equal. Using the hobby saw, I did a rough cut around the outline I had drawn; then subsequently used the X-Acto knife and a 150-grit sandpaper stick to smooth the edges: The second step followed a similar structure to the first step, except that I pulled the lip to be 0.5cm from the edge. Designing the curve around was also a little tricky, so I used the first step a little as guidance. Again, saw then X-Acto/sandpaper stick to smooth the edges Putting them together, I get a good idea of roughly how it looks. I trimmed a touch from the corners of the top step, then proceeded to glue them together: While waiting for that to dry, I'm going to tackle the low fence!

Said it before, say it again - looks amazing! But you already knew that :)

So, obviously I didn't get to finish the diorama before ReaperCon. However, I had taken pictures of my diorama progress before I went on a crazy need-to-finish-this-now mode. I spent the weekend before the con painting the fan on the geisha: I quite like how it looked to be made of paper and light coloured wood. Purely unintentional - I was going for a light orange So I gave the water effects the requisite 24 hours and some more, then approached it with trepidation. Actually, it didn't turn out too bad. A tad dark in the water. Plasticard is also very easy to peel off even when afixed with superglue - if one doesn't mind some of the cork going with. You can just see the little fishies in the water, which was the intent :) Did not want to see the bottom. This is my practice one: I experimented with painting moonlight reflection on top of the water. It didn't turn out too bad; I think it's doable. I finished the lantern sculpt: It's a bit big, but oh well. I'm debating on whether to poke holes into the lantern part or just paint the holes in. I'm leaning towards the paint since I don't want to screw it up. And this is where the lantern will end up: Oh, and FYI, this is how the geisha turned out: Got a silver

This was a very very awesome Reapercon. I managed to pick up so many minis that even 20 years later I wouldn't have all of them painted, got some very excellent tips and techniques from the artists (cheers out to Michael Proctor for tolerating my constant presence, questions and interruptions), loved trying out the new HD paints in the speed painting competition, and had an absolute blast playing the variety of games on offer. GM Chris ran some very tight Star Wars games with probably the best spaceship encounter I've ever played in. BIG BIG thanks to everyone who organised and helped out with this event, and for being so friendly and approachable.

You do some really excellent base work, I will admit. My favorite is the pirate. It looks so smooth

The base and lantern part of the lantern have been cured. So I superglued the three pieces together. It does look a tad lopsided, however, but eh. The day was dedicated to painting the model, since I'm still sulking slightly over the base mishap. I spent a good two or so hours trying to find an adequate pattern to put on her kimono. I found one that would work for this scale, but I'm a little unsure on to how it translated: Close-up I know there are places I need to touch up, but I tend to do them last in case I make more boo-boos (which is typical)

I thought you could still get your ticket even after the deadline for the t-shirt - you just didn't get a t-shirt.

Yesterday was more focus on the base. And what japanese garden is complete without some koi I painted the base a very dark blue. The intent is to have all the surrounding areas of the model to be in shades of blue and purple to a) draw attention to the model being all light coloured and whatnot and b) imply that it's evening. I staged some of the items to get an idea of how I'd like things to be. The rocks around the pond were important - I made sure that the big ones were on the edge of the cork and it gradually went smaller so that the smallest ones were in front of the model - another trick to draw focus to her. The stones were also positioned so that part of the stone would be submerged in the water. Then painted the same dark blue: The koi in the pond: I had experimented a couple of nights ago on applying the water effects with a setup similar to the base, only with two closed-in holes. One had a blue base with clear water, the other had tinted blue water over the blue base. It looked better with the tinted water, so I decided to go with that. And so I left it. Lesson no 3: Cork is a bit porous. I returned the next night and noticed that there wasn't much left in the holes. I thought it had to do with stories that people would tell of the water effects shrinking, but when I picked it up and looked underneath, it had soaked through. So I noted this, and made sure that the bottom of the pond would get a coat of brush-on sealer, a coat of pvc glue then another coat of brush-on sealer. In my eagerness to get the water effects in to go through the 24 hour period of drying, I neglected to seal up the holes between the stone. D'oh! So when I poured in the water, I had a fair amount of leakage, and I quickly rolled up some greystuff to seal up the leaks - but the damage had been done. So I poured out the water, let it sit and instead I sulked a little and went to play Dragon Age. In hindsight, however, it was a pretty good mistake - I had tinted the water too light a blue, and the putty between the rocks now make an excellent place to put moss and little tufts of grass. And now, the resin has made a tight seal over all porous areas of the cork so next time there won't be any leakage at all. I also poured in this water into the experiment base with the intent of seeing how I would be able to paint moonlight reflection on top of the water. Finally, I had started sculpting a lantern. This is to be the legs - I had started with a block and then carved out, with a rather blunt xacto knife, the arches underneath: This was a result of lesson no. 2: use reference pictures. The first lantern I attempted to sculpt looked like crap, so I started over again with a picture as reference. I have a flat, hexagon piece, and the hexagon piece that will be the actual lantern currently curing. This is the reference picture:

Hey, we are trying to pre-order on more ticket for this weekend but we cannot find the link anymore. Are they still preordering tickets?

Depending on the airport, they have the full body scanners now instead of the metal detectors. I prefer the pat-down.

I cannot remember - are namebadges provided in the bag of goodies if you pre-registered? If so, are people intending on putting their internet moniker and avatar on the badge so that we can connect names with the peeps we know online?

I have a somewhat large collection of L5R miniatures, as well as some Daimyo. I was going to try to unload them on eBay, but would there be any love for them at the Con?

My tree I'm envisioning the leaves to trail outside of the diorama also. The tree with half the "leaves" done. This took me a long long long time! You can see to the right all the fine, little threads that I ended up with. Ta-da! The tree in all it's afro bushyness. I also sculpted on a trunk and attempted to get some branches in. Pruned tree. I'm still thinking the leaves are too "bushy" and notthe straight up-and-down that I want it to be. I am pondering on how I can do that. Base and Base with sculpting. That hole is where the pond is going to be. I'm going to start an experiment tonight to see if the water effects look better clear on a coloured ground or tinted a dark blue. My hedges. Japanese gardens are surprisingly well manicured, so some pieces of foam stuck together, "sculpted" with the scissors into their ball shapes, covered in glue then dipped in flock. The challenge has been keeping these little light floaty balls away from the cat.

Stunning. You did amazing on the freehand work on the cape. For some reason, the chain end from her left hand seems to be angled weirdly, but everytime I inspect it, I can't find fault with the setup at all, so I'm blaming myself for that one :) She's really beautiful.

That's a beautiful job, I think you did a great job with the shadow effect because I can't tell that it's a paint job - I keep thinking that the lighting is not incorporated into the painting :)

Congrats! I am very envious - I wish I could get a job that paid me to paint :(

So mid-last week, I learned my first lesson on freehand - design it first BEFORE putting on the mini, as opposed to making it up as you go along. To make a long story short, I had to repaint over the dress. Utterly disgusted with myself and rather disheartened, I turned instead to the base. I decided to tackle the longest, most tedious portion - the weeping willow, that is supposed to have the leaves dangle softly into the water of the pond. I'll update with pictures, but ultimately I raided my cross-stitch thread collection, gathered a good bundle of threads, and glued them together to make the trunk. The rest of the four evenings was spent unravelling each and every strand in the clump. If you've never seen a cross-stitch thread, there are usually 6 in a bundle... and the threads are actually two smaller threads spun together rather tightly. As I think I had about 10 bundles, meaning 60 threads, each having to be unravelled... it took a very long time. When it was all done and my tree looked more like a poorly designed muppet, I tried to change the colour of the threads (which were a coral red and pale twilight blue) by painting over with a mix of brown ink and Ultramarine Blue. Try being the operative word. I just ended up tinting the threads with the brown. Now I'm part-way through the last tedious bit - coating each and every strand in glue then in a mid-green flock. I completed about half of it last night; I hope to finish it tonight. But I am actually very glad I didn't wait to build the diorama until the mini had been finished painted!

Then expect a wild-haired aussie chick hunting you down for that 45 minute demo :)

Beautiful work! I love everything about it - the scales, the base, the wings especially. It's amazing that you can use so many colours to get this effect. I'm incredibly envious of your ability there.

Holy crap, that's amazing for four hours. I spend at least four hours just deliberating on what colours I want to use! You have to do a speedpaint at Reapercon so we can see your awesomeness in action.

I second on the tentacles & glowy eyes. They look amazing